Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Conservative Bait and Switch, or, Government By Cliche

A huge part of the Conservative Movement has been to simply shift the funding of government from progressive taxation to exorbitant fines and fees for traffic violations, parking tickets, misdemeanors of other sorts, property forfeitures of large amounts of money or homes or cars, home foreclosures and forfeiture of the entire proceeds from the sale of the home for failure to pay a small property tax bill (including if you didn't know that it was due or was not paid). This is all part of freedom! Liberty! The private contractors for government services and operations, and the police and judges whose conflict of interest ensures the more-than-adequacy of this method of government funding, have to be paid, y'know.

Excellent post at Angry Bear on an important topic I hold dear: Republican bullshit, and the consequences of failing to call it out. [EDIT: Looks like the link didn't work. Now fixed.]

A huge part of the Conservative Movement has been to simply shift the funding of government from progressive taxation to exorbitant fines and fees for traffic violations, parking tickets, misdemeanors of other sorts, property forfeitures of large amounts of money or homes or cars, home foreclosures and forfeiture of the entire proceeds from the sale of the home for failure to pay a small property tax bill (including if you didn't know that it was due or was not paid). This is all part of freedom! Liberty! The private contractors for government services and operations, and the police and judges whose conflict of interest ensures the more-than-adequacy of this method of government funding, have to be paid, y'know.

Anything and everything to push the tax burden down the income scale, and to loot whatever valuable assets that generations of Americans built together remaining in the public sphere.

Hey! If we sell our most productive assets to rich people at fire sale prices, we can help keep marginal income tax rates on those seem rich people down. A two-fer! It's a no-brainer, by which I mean you must have no brain to be taken in by these charlatans.